Category Archives: Reviews

Buying my new gear at Appalachian outfitters was probably the easiest, best experience involved with planning for Costa Rica. Their prices were more than reasonable compared to other local outfitters. I went in there with NO IDEA what kind of pack I needed and what else I would buy. A guy named Russ helped me out. He measured my torso, asked how long I was going, where I was going, what I was using the pack for, etc. Then showed me my best options. He taught me how to properly adjust the packs and how to load it properly.

Russ told us about his 6 month trip on the Appalachian trail. I was looking for 100% DEET and they didn’t carry it but he even helped us find it in another local store.

I felt very welcome in the store and really enjoyed the experience. I HIGHLY suggest you check them out if you’re in the area.

If you’re planning on going to costa rica just rent from a car rental company. I thought it would be nice to help support local small business and started researching cell phone rentals in Costa Rica. I came up with a few options and finally decided on www.cellphonescr.com. Boy did I learn my lesson. I should have heeded warnings from other travelers. Even reputable forums like the fodors forum advise against this company with posts like this:

I made my preliminary reservation on their poorly designed website about two weeks ago. I received an email back a few days later answering some of my questions but leaving me with more. After exchanging emails back and forth for a few days I settled on plan 1 and told them to make the reservation.

A while went by and I never heard anything. I wasn’t charged a deposit. NOTHING happened. Lauren was going to be showing up a day earlier than I was so I submitted another reservation. This time I received their automated email saying they had received it and never got anything else.

So finally, today we’re getting everything in order and printing our reservaitons and such and I call cellphonescr.com. I originally got a hold of a guy who was learning english. He did his best to help me but ultimately it was very unprofessional. He said the owner was out of the office but no reservations were in the system for me or Lauren and he advised me to resubmit a reservation.

I immediately resubmitted it and again, I received nothing. I called and left a message stressing how important a call or email back was and again, received nothing. Finally, I called a couple hours ago and the owner answered finally. He scoffed at me for submitting the reservation today and was very rude. He said there weren’t any phones available and I should have reserved one earlier.

I advised him that I DID reserve one weeks ago and never heard back from Sandi (the girl who does the reservations). I told him about all of the emails and messages I had left and he said I did not send them. Finally, after arguing with him for about 5 minutes I decided the company must be pretty shady and I had better just go with the car rental company’s cell phone. To end the conversation he told me he rents hundreds of phones a month and I wouldn’t be missed.

Well buddy, I hope you don’t miss all the people that find this review and decide to take the same route I’m taking. If there’s anything I’ve learned running a business it is that, one dissatisfied customer will talk about your company more than 100 satisfied customers and my previous post about how slow your service is has already been indexed by google. Do a search for “cellphonescr.com”. Oh and don’t worry, I remembered the “nofollow” tag in my link to your site